Unicorn Blood
by TheNextFolchart
Summary: Someone might see her and wonder what Helga Hufflepuff, the legendary Founder of Hogwarts, was doing in the Forbidden Forest - or, more importantly, how the legendary Founder of Hogwarts was still alive. /Semi-Sequel to The Sorting Hat and Of Animagi And Men. For Tris.


_For Tris._

* * *

_[Off The Block Competition: Medley, Medium - write about Helga Hufflepuff]_

_[Die Hard Competition: Suicide]_

_[Interesting Word Challenge: Apanthropinization - the resignation of human concerns; withdrawal from the world and its problems_

_Mono no aware (Japanese) - "the pathos of things"; the gentle wistfulness at the transience of things, and the awareness of the sadness of existence_

_Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi) - nature out of balance; a way of life so unbalanced that you need a new way]_

_[Disney Character Competition: Mickey Mouse - write about the Founders of Hogwarts. Prompt: blood]_

_[Duct Tape Challenge: Snowman - write about someone with a heart of ice]_

_[Legendary Gods & Goddesses Challenge: Athena - Write about someone who is very wise.]_

_[Oh The Thinks You Can Think Challenge: The Once-ler - write about a horcrux.]_

_[The Book Thief Quotes Competition: "I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate."]_

* * *

Helga Hufflepuff had been an animal for a very long time.

It wasn't that she was stuck in her animagus form - she wasn't. She still knew how to transform. Sometimes it was tempting to duck out of her animal persona and stretch her human legs.

But she never did.

It simply wasn't practical. Someone might see her and wonder what the legendary Founder of Hogwarts was doing in the Forbidden Forest - or, more importantly, how the legendary Founder of Hogwarts was still _alive. _

(The answer to that question was buried in a box deep below the forest, and it wasn't something Helga was ever planning on digging up.)

So instead of changing back into a human, Helga Hufflepuff withdrew from the world and its many complications and wandered around the Forbidden Forest, nibbling at berries and slurping from streams and galloping around after the creatures. She loved them all, from the Hippogriffs to the Thestrals to the spiders, and she liked to work her way through the forest every few days to check on them. They all knew her - how could they not, when she was the only one of her kind in the forest? - and they all loved her, and she loved them all back sevenfold. The Forbidden Forest was her _garden_. She'd planted every tree, imported every creature, raised them, nurtured them, watched them grow. They were like her children, and she would care for them faithfully for as long as they existed.

(_Existed, _not _lived,_ because she knew firsthand that some people were around long after they died.)

"The unicorn is back," one of the centaurs called to his fellows when she came trotting between the trees to meet them. The centaurs sensed that Helga wasn't entirely animal - there was _human _in those eyes - and that was enough to make her something of a portent to them

"The moon is bright tonight," Ronan commented. "We expected you, Unicorn."

Helga nickered and rubbed her nose along Ronan's back.

"As pure and lovely as the Goddess of the Hunt herself," Magorian said, inclining his head toward her. "I christen thee Artemis."

Helga turned to the centaur and lowered her head until her horn touched the ground at his feet. _I'm no Artemis, _she wanted to tell him. _I'm not a huntress. Just a watchman._

A loud, lasting cry pierced through the solemnity of the moment. Helga jerked out of her bow in time to see a blood-red phoenix flick between the trees. The phoenix - and Helga had seen enough to recognize it as a very specific phoenix - let out another cry, and this time the unicorn lifted her head and answered with a whinny.

"Is it an omen, Artemis?" asked Ronan, but Helga was already cantering away after the bird.

Fawkes the phoenix flew low to the ground, swerving between trees and under branches, with Helga hot on his heels. He alighted on a branch on the outskirts of a clearing and whistled two notes back and forth, staring intently at the flat stone marking the ground. _Need you, need you, need you,_ the whistle seemed to say. Helga made eye contact with Fawkes - there was human in those eyes, too - and then, for the first time in over a century, Helga shed her animagus form and stood up as a human.

"What is it, Rowena?" she asked.

Fawkes dropped from the tree. By the time he landed, he had transformed into a woman. Rowena Ravenclaw brushed her blue-black hair away from her face and came forward in two long strides to seize Helga by the arm. "It's Dumbledore," she said, and her face was white. "He's dead."

Helga bit her lip. "Who?"

"_Dumbledore. _The headmaster of our school. The only one with the power to destroy Salazar's descendant. Hel, he's _dead._"

"Salazar's descendant?"

Rowena gave Helga a long look before rolling her eyes. "Hel, I know you don't like to leave the forest, but I wish you'd come out every ten years or so to get caught up. You're behind on all the news."

"So catch me up." Helga gently unwound herself from Rowena's grasp and offered her old friend a smile. "What's new?"

"When's the last time you came out of the forest?"

"Hmm." Helga crunched her eyebrows together. "I'm not sure. Fifteenth century, maybe?"

Rowena groaned. "Okay, when's the last time anything unusual happened _within _the forest?"

Helga thought about it for a moment. "Someone tried to kill me," she said. "Recently, actually. Five years ago. Maybe six."

Rowena sank to the forest floor and spread her robes around her. Helga sat beside her. "Who tried to kill you? What happened?"

"It was a man. He wanted my blood. He wanted to drink it. I don't know why."

"Unicorn blood has healing properties," Rowena said immediately. "How did you get away?"

"I didn't. He stabbed me. I lay on the ground for awhile, and when everyone was gone I just - you know, got up again. I was fine. Good as new. As if nothing had happened." She looked pointedly at the stone in the center of the clearing. "Those things really do work, you know."

Rowena looked at the stone, too. "No, they don't," she said quietly. "I suppose you didn't know about this, either, but Sal's dead."

"What?" It was as if someone had pushed her off a cliff. Salazar Slytherin was _dead?_ "But what about the plan? I thought we were going to lay low. Keep out of sight. Watch over the school in our animagus forms and not cause any trouble."

"He didn't stick to the plan."

"Even so - Sal's form was a _Basilisk_. How on _Earth _did anyone manage to defeat a - "

"I helped," Rowena whispered. Helga's eyes widened. "I had to. He was killing people."

"But Rena - that's not - he shouldn't have been able to die!"

She nodded at the stone. "I came here first. I dug up the box. I made him mortal."

Helga was silent for a few seconds. "This wasn't supposed to happen," she said finally. "We were all supposed to live forever."

"That's why I'm here." Rowena stood and drew her wand. "I don't want to live forever anymore."

"_What_?" Helga jumped to her feet. "Rena! You can't mean - "

"I do. Things have changed in the outside world, Hel. You remember Sal's crazy ideas about blood purity? Well, some of his descendants caught on. They're ruthless. They're fighting wars. Dumbledore was the only one strong enough to stop them. And now he's gone. We _lost_, Hel. Sal may have died in the Chamber of Secrets, but his terrible ideals are alive and well, and they're going to win." She laughed a little, bitterly. "I guess some people like to watch destruction. Sal's capacity to escalate always was his greatest skill." She drew a deep breath. "It's time to give up. It's time to do what we should have done an age ago." She pointed her wand at the stone. "_Wingardium leviosa._"

The stone rose a few feet off the ground and hovered there until Rena cast it aside. "_Accio - _" She cut herself off to take another deep breath, and Helga was shocked to see tears in her eyes.

"Let me," she whispered, pulling out her own wand. "_Accio _horcruxes."

The box came soaring up out of the ground.

With trembling hands, Helga pulled off the lid.

Three beating hearts - and one motionless, icy, dead one - lay at the bottom.

Helena's hand moved unconsciously to the scar just to the left of her sternum. Where she'd used to have a heartbeat there was now only stillness.

They'd gotten the idea after taking out Godric's brains to put in the Sorting Hat. After all, what better receptacle for a piece of your soul than your very own heart? It certainly made the horcrux process more poetic, and Helga was weak for anything poetic. So each Founder had had his or her heart removed, duplicated, and then replaced. But something was wrong with the new hearts - they didn't beat. They sat like stones within each Founder's chest while the external hearts, the horcrux hearts, expanded and contracted on their own, as if they were breathing, as if they were alive. "So that one was Salazar's?" Helga asked, pointing at the frozen heart

Rena nodded. The tears began to flow down her face. "That was his." She reached inside and cupped her hands around her own heart. "Hello," she whispered, stroking it gently with her fingertips. "I haven't seen you in a long time."

The horcrux quivered.

"Does Gryffindor know you're going to do this?" Helga asked.

Rena shook her head. "But the Sorting Hat knows. I told him a few days ago, when we found out Dumbledore was dead."

"Why didn't you go find Godric?"

She smiled a little - only a shadow of the fantastic smirk she used to wear. "Godric is busy being a Giant Squid. He's embraced his animagus form so fully that I doubt he remembers he used to be human." She stroked her heart again. "I think I like things that way. I don't want him to remember me. I don't want him to miss me."

"He wouldn't have to miss you if you stayed alive," Helga said, laying a hand on Rena's arm.

Rena shook her head. "I've made up my mind. I had it made up days ago. I'm exhausted, Hel. Lives are meant to last for a little while, and then they're meant to end. We aren't supposed to keep going and going and _going _like this. We've thrown nature out of balance, and now we must set it right." Her eyes were shining through their wetness. "There is a sadness in existence that none of us anticipated."

Helga closed her eyes to hold back tears of her own. "I have to stay alive," she whispered. "I - we all did an awful thing to make those horcruxes, Rena, and I'll be damned if it was for nothing." She put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Eternity will be very long and very bleak without you, my friend," she said, and then she pressed a kiss against Rena's cheek and transformed back into a unicorn.

She galloped away from that place as fast as she could.

(But it wasn't fast enough.)

(Because she still heard the phoenix's final cry as it died for the very last time.)

* * *

_A/N: Catch up on what you missed:_

_The Sorting Hat_

_Of Animagi and Men_


End file.
